MEMOIR / LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES
The life and times of Ana Margarita Gasteazoro: political activist, clandestine operative, and prisoner of conscience
Tell Mother I’m in Paradise Memoirs of a Political Prisoner in El Salvador Ana Margarita Gasteazoro / Introduction by Erik Ching EDITED BY JUDY BLANKENSHIP AND ANDREW WILSON
APRIL 6 x 9 / 280 PAGES / 25 B&W FIGURES / 1 MAP ISBN 978-0-8173-2121-5 / $34.95t CLOTH ISBN 978-0-8173-9397-7 / $34.95 EBOOK “As a journalist visiting El Salvador during its brutal civil war, I met Ana Margarita Gasteazoro in the women’s prison of Ilopango. I was struck by her passion for justice, her honesty, and her compassion for what the people of her country have suffered. The same qualities shine through in this book. Judy Blankenship and Andrew Wilson have done a great service in making this remarkable woman’s story available to readers. I hope they will be as inspired and moved by it as I am.” —Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial America
ALSO OF INTEREST
4 Spring 2022
Ana Margarita Gasteazoro (1950–1993) was a Salvadoran opposition activist and renowned Amnesty International prisoner of conscience. Tell Mother I’m in Paradise: Memoirs of a Political Prisoner in El Salvador recounts her extraordinary life story. From a privileged Catholic upbringing, with time spent studying and working abroad, Gasteazoro first became a member of the legal political opposition in the late 1970s and later a clandestine operative at work against the brutal military junta. Gasteazoro recounts her early rebellion against the strictures of conservative upper-class Salvadoran society. She spoke perfect English and discovered a talent for organizing in administrative jobs abroad and at home. As the civil war progressed, she quickly became a valued figure in the National Revolutionary Movement (MNR), a social-democratic party, often representing it at international meetings. Against the backdrop of massive social oppression and the “disappearances” of thousands of opposition members, Gasteazoro began a double life as an operative in a faction of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN). Multitalented and energetic, she organized safe houses for fellow activists, transported weapons and equipment, wrote scripts for an underground radio station, and produced an award-winning documentary film. But the toll on her family life and personal relationships was heavy. Gasteazoro was disappeared in May 1981 by the infamous National Guard and endured a nightmare eleven days of interrogations, beatings, and abuse. Through international pressure and the connections of her family, her arrest was finally made public, and she was transferred to the women’s prison at Ilopango. There, she and other activists continued the political struggle through the Committee of Political Prisoners of El Salvador (COPPES). During her two years in prison, tested by hunger strikes, violence, and factional divisions, she became one of Amnesty International’s best-known prisoners of conscience. Tell Mother I’m in Paradise is a gripping story of a self-aware activist and a vital young woman’s struggle to find her own way within a deeply conservative society.
Heart of Palms: My Peace Corps Years in Tranquilla Meredith W. Cornett
Ana Margarita Gasteazoro (1950–1993) was a Salvadoran political activist and prisoner of conscience.
ISBN 978-0-8173-1818-5 $29.95t CLOTH EBOOK AVAILABLE
are Our House in the Clouds: Building a Second Life in the Andes of Ecuador and Cañar: A Year in the Highlands of Ecuador.
Judy Blankenship is a writer and photojournalist. Among her books
Andrew Wilson is a writer, editor, and translator. He is author of Translators on Translating: Inside the Invisible Art and coauthor of A Fiery Soul: The Life and Theatrical Times of John Hirsch.
